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Setup Go Action

Basic validation Validate 'setup-go'

This action sets up a Go environment for use in GitHub Actions by:

  • Optionally downloading and caching a version of Go by version and adding to PATH
  • Registering problem matchers for error output
  • Providing intelligent caching for Go modules and build outputs

Quick Start

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v5
  - uses: actions/setup-go@v6
    with:
      go-version: '1.21'
  - run: go version

Breaking Changes

V6 - Major Updates

Critical Requirements

  • Node Runtime: Upgraded from Node 20 to Node 24
  • ⚠️ Action Required: Ensure your runner is on version v2.327.1 or later for compatibility
  • See Release Notes

Enhanced Toolchain Management

V6 significantly improves toolchain handling for more reliable and consistent Go version selection:

Now supports toolchain directive from go.mod:

go 1.21.0           // Minimum required version
toolchain go1.21.6  // V6 uses this exact version when specified

V5 - Previous Updates

Usage

See action.yml

Basic Setup

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v5
  - uses: actions/setup-go@v6
    with:
      go-version: '1.16.1' # The Go version to download (if necessary) and use
  - run: go run hello.go

Version Selection

Semantic Versioning

# Using caret notation (latest patch release)
steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v5
  - uses: actions/setup-go@v6
    with:
      go-version: '^1.13.1' # The Go version to download (if necessary) and use
  - run: go version

# Using comparison operators
steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v5
  - uses: actions/setup-go@v6
    with:
      go-version: '>=1.17.0'
  - run: go version

Note: Due to YAML parsing behavior, always wrap version numbers in single quotes:

go-version: '1.20'  # Correct

Without quotes, YAML interprets 1.20 as 1.2, which may cause unexpected behavior.

Pre-release Versions

# RC version
steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v5
  - uses: actions/setup-go@v6
    with:
      go-version: '1.18.0-rc.1' # The Go version to download (if necessary) and use
  - run: go version

# Beta version
steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v5
  - uses: actions/setup-go@v6
    with:
      go-version: '1.16.0-beta.1' # The Go version to download (if necessary) and use
  - run: go version

Check Latest Version

The check-latest flag defaults to false. Use the default or set check-latest to false if you prefer stability and want to ensure a specific Go version is always used.

If check-latest is set to true, the action first checks if the cached version is the latest one. If the locally cached version is not the most up-to-date, a Go version will then be downloaded.

Note: Setting check-latest to true has performance implications as downloading Go versions is slower than using cached versions.

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v5
  - uses: actions/setup-go@v6
    with:
      go-version: '1.14'
      check-latest: true
  - run: go run hello.go

Using stable/oldstable Aliases

If stable is provided, action will get the latest stable version from the go-versions repository manifest.

If oldstable is provided, when current release is 1.19.x, action will resolve version as 1.18.x, where x is the latest patch release.

Note: Using these aliases will result in same version as using corresponding minor release with check-latest input set to true

# Latest stable version
steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v5
  - uses: actions/setup-go@v6
    with:
      go-version: 'stable'
  - run: go run hello.go

# Previous stable version
steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v5
  - uses: actions/setup-go@v6
    with:
      go-version: 'oldstable'
  - run: go run hello.go

Caching Dependencies and Build Outputs

The action has built-in functionality for caching and restoring go modules and build outputs. It uses toolkit/cache under the hood but requires less configuration settings. The cache input is optional, and caching is turned on by default.

The action defaults to search for the dependency file - go.sum in the repository root, and uses its hash as a part of the cache key. Use cache-dependency-path input for cases when multiple dependency files are used, or they are located in different subdirectories. The input supports glob patterns.

If some problem that prevents success caching happens then the action issues the warning in the log and continues the execution of the pipeline.

Caching in Monorepos

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v5
  - uses: actions/setup-go@v6
    with:
      go-version: '1.17'
      check-latest: true
      cache-dependency-path: |
        subdir/go.sum
        tools/go.sum        
      # Alternative: cache-dependency-path: "**/*.sum"
  - run: go run hello.go

Getting Go Version from go.mod File

The go-version-file input accepts a path to a go.mod file or a go.work file that contains the version of Go to be used by a project. The version taken from this file will be:

  1. The version from the toolchain directive, if there is one, otherwise
  2. The version from the go directive

The version can specify a patch version or omit it altogether (e.g., go 1.22.0 or go 1.22).

  • If a patch version is specified, that specific patch version will be used
  • If no patch version is specified, it will search for the latest available patch version in the cache, versions-manifest.json, and the official Go language website, in that order

Note: If both go-version and go-version-file inputs are provided then the go-version input is used.

The action will search for the go.mod file relative to the repository root:

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v5
  - uses: actions/setup-go@v6
    with:
      go-version-file: 'path/to/go.mod'
  - run: go version

Matrix Testing

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        go: [ '1.14', '1.13' ]
    name: Go ${{ matrix.go }} sample
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5
      - name: Setup go
        uses: actions/setup-go@v6
        with:
          go-version: ${{ matrix.go }}
      - run: go run hello.go

Version Resolution

The action will first check the local cache for a version match. If a version is not found locally, it will pull it from the main branch of the go-versions repository. On miss or failure, it will fall back to downloading directly from go dist. To change the default behavior, please use the check-latest input.

Note: The setup-go action uses executable binaries which are built by Golang side. The action does not build golang from source code.

Supported Version Syntax

The go-version input supports the following syntax:

  • Specific versions: 1.15, 1.16.1, 1.17.0-rc.2, 1.16.0-beta.1
  • SemVer's version range syntax: ^1.13.1, >=1.18.0-rc.1

For more information about semantic versioning, please refer to semver documentation.

Using setup-go on GHES

setup-go comes pre-installed on the appliance with GHES if Actions is enabled. When dynamically downloading Go distributions, setup-go downloads distributions from actions/go-versions on github.com (outside of the appliance).

These calls to actions/go-versions are made via unauthenticated requests, which are limited to 60 requests per hour per IP. If more requests are made within the time frame, then the action leverages the raw API to retrieve the version-manifest. This approach does not impose a rate limit and hence facilitates unrestricted consumption. This is particularly beneficial for GHES runners, which often share the same IP, to avoid the quick exhaustion of the unauthenticated rate limit. If that fails as well the action will try to download versions directly from https://storage.googleapis.com/golang.

If that fails as well you can get a higher rate limit with generating a personal access token on github.com and passing it as the token input to the action:

uses: actions/setup-go@v6
with:
  token: ${{ secrets.GH_DOTCOM_TOKEN }}
  go-version: '1.18'

If the runner is not able to access github.com, any Go versions requested during a workflow run must come from the runner's tool cache. See "Setting up the tool cache on self-hosted runners without internet access" for more information.

Recommended Permissions

When using the setup-go action in your GitHub Actions workflow, it is recommended to set the following permissions to ensure proper functionality:

permissions:
  contents: read # access to check out code and install dependencies

License

The scripts and documentation in this project are released under the MIT License

Contributions

Contributions are welcome! See Contributor's Guide

Code of Conduct

👋 Be nice. See our code of conduct